My Edsa that failed; US makes a critical move

I was an exile in Europe, in the city of London to be precise when the Edsa 1986 peaceful revolution broke out. You cannot imagine how happy I was with the thought that my family and I would be able to return home after 20 years.

However pleasant this city it was a place of exile, it was not home. Many of our heroes, while in exile in Europe in the 19th century, wrote about the peculiar sadness of homesickness. You live with it everyday – with every waking hour, always with the thought that this was not home but that one day it would be possible to return home. The thought can be overpowering to an exile. It becomes the only real worthwhile future.

There were only a few of us who were political exiles in London. Those who stayed away from the Philippines because of the threat of political persecution were mostly in the US. That was where to be for political activists against the Marcos dictatorship. In my case it was made doubly difficult because I wrote The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos at the time when she was the most powerful woman of the country. She had singled me out for personal offense.

Filipinos in Europe were economic exiles. They were away from home because they wanted to earn more. They were not necessarily poor or downtrodden although that was the picture painted of them in media. They would not hear of any attempt to disrupt their work that they saw as a lucky break. The only way was to show them that politics and economics were related and that they should be home, earning and living with their families. That had to be crux of our campaign as exiles in London.

In exile, there was no other way to express my emotional situation. It must have been homesickness. I was longing for home. But when I came home and saw that nothing had changed about the issues we fought for as exiles, I realized that the longing could not be satisfied nor could it be found outside of oneself.

It is a feeling I could not put my finger on. And then, quite by chance I found the word from a post in Facebook — hiraeth. It is a Welsh word and there is no English equivalent. It is about a feeling of longing, not ordinary longing but a deep longing for good, for love, for country.  I don’t know.

It is a complex concept. It is about an impossible longing that in the end proves to be unattainable. Not that we should stop working for better politics and government for the Philippines. We can and we should. The task is never to give up however much it looks impossible to achieve.

Through the experience of exile and return, I learned the virtue of hiraeth. That also meant that my homesickness in London would never leave me.

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There has been a momentous development in the US-China conflict on the South China Sea. Jeffrey A. Bader in the Brookings publication wrote about it in his article “US and China’s Nine-Dash Line: Ending the Ambiguity.” Is that good or bad for the Philippines? It is if it means that there will be a pivot to diplomacy.

“For the first time, the United States government has come out publicly with an explicit statement that the so-called “nine-dash line,” which the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan assert delineates their claims in the South China Sea, is contrary to international law.

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Danny Russel, in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on February 5, said, “Under international law, maritime claims in the South China Sea must be derived from land features.”

With these words the US legal basis for contesting China is on the table. There is no need to use the Philippines as its cat’s paw for expressing their argument.

“Any use of the ‘nine-dash line’ by China to claim maritime rights not based on claimed land features would be inconsistent with international law. The international community would welcome China to clarify or adjust its nine-dash line claim to bring it in accordance with the international law of the sea.”

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An experienced and knowledgeable Filipino diplomat on management of the sea, Amb. Alberto Encomienda wrote me.

“Your Philippine STAR column last Sunday, 15 February 2014 entitled “The real adversaries” is, as it is said, spot on.

May I add my own comment to the South China Sea statement of Assistant Secretary Baker. Maritime claims in violation of UNCLOS does not happen only in the South China Sea.

Captain J. Ashley Roach, Office of the Legal Adviser, State Department (ret.) authored two volumes (and now in a third and revised edition) entitled “Excessive Maritime Claims.” It is about violations of so many countries around the world to UNCLOS prescriptions on maritime territorial and jurisdictional delineation.

When the United States sees a need to, it challenges these claims through assertion or probing activities conducted by the US military. At this time, when the United States is so loudly proclaiming rules-based approach in the settlement of maritime disputes in the South China Sea, perhaps it should abandon the employment of “military might” in its pursuit of what is “right.”

It should now pivot towards implementing UNCLOS (such as recourse to ITLOS, among others) peaceful mechanisms to challenge excessive maritime claims. This thrust would be a more acceptable and innovative demonstration of American exceptionalism.”

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To continue with this column’s desire to help develop as many personal friendships between Filipinos, Chinese, and Filipino-Chinese, I cannot miss on one of the more enduring friendships between a Filipino Tsinoy,  George Ty, the chairman emeritus of the Metropolitan Bank and the many Filipinos he has helped to give them the skills for nation-building.

I was not present on the day he was given the Grand Exemplar medallion by those he had helped during the celebration of the Metrobank’s 35th anniversary.

Presidents of the alumni groups of outstanding teachers, artists, soldiers, police officers, and scholars as well as the Board of Advisers of the Metrobank Foundation attended when it was conferred on Dr. Ty during the board’s 35th anniversary recently.

The Metrobank Foundation, year after year, gives excellence awards for outstanding teachers, artists and designers, soldiers, police officers as well as journalists. It has been doing so for many years and alumni of these awards have multiplied into hundreds.  The pass on of the virtues and skills in their different fields would be difficult to estimate.